…love Jillian

So, we have so much exciting stuff going on right now.  I’ve had a couple big days at work setting up some new high volume accounts…which should come in handy when it comes time to move into our new house.   (Moving is expensive.  So is puppy food.)

Speaking of the new house, we finally got the official paperwork organized and we will be doing inspections on Saturday!  I’m getting really excited to move.  Now, I just need to start packing….maybe I will do that this weekend too.  You know, after I nap.  I have the worst cold right now and everytime I start to feel a little better, I relapse–mostly at night and first thing in the morning.  Nothing feels worse than when you can’t stop coughing…

Last weekend we had a busy and fun weekend, we went to the Kansas City Comets soccer game.  We had never been before and it turned out to be a really good time.  (Some of our finest heckling for sure :)

 Then, I went to see Black Swam with a good buddy on Saturday.  (I had heard some less than favorable reviews from my family BUT since there was so much skuttle butt about it, we thought we should make our decisions. 

I thought Natalie Portman did a great job and I loved all the dancing but I could have done without all the weird sex scenes—I got a little embarrassed and I don’t embarrass easy.  

Then Sunday was family day!  We watched the Chiefs lose their playoff game (I can’t help but still LOVE them) and had dinner.  It’s always nice sitting on the couch with Mom, Dad, and Juls, it reminds me of living at home….and how easy life was then.

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Last night on my way to Fusion I was caught in what seemed like the worst traffic jam in the history of traffic jams.  No accident, no collapsed road, just people driving slowly and erratically and I missed Fusion.  So, in its absence I took Hubs to see Eat Pray Love. 

         I had extremely high hopes for this movie.  And while I can’t say I thought it was great; it wasn’t awful either—Hubs felt a little differently.  He was less than impressed with the cinematic counterpart to my favorite book.  He was a trooper though; he sat through the entire 2:13 minutes with only a couple annoyed shifts in his seat. And when it was all over, he simply said he couldn’t identify with any of the characters and he has no feelings about this movie at all.  Well, duh–it’s a movie about a woman on a search for self discovery after leaving her dull and lifeless marriage.  I’m not sure what I expected him to say.

         Earlier today, I heard another unfavorable review from a friend, she said, “she enjoyed the book but hated the movie.”  In the movie’s defense; it was exactly what her book was: a quiet journey through Italy, India, and Indonesia aka spaghetti, chanting, and meditation.  And in reality that’s just not very exciting.  Sure, anyone can do action, comedy, or even romance but this was a documentary of her personal travels, inner dialogue, and her slow transformation into the person she wanted to be…

        I can’t imagine how upset the world would be if they had spent $10 to sit through 2:13 minutes of footage from my time in Chicago.  Frozen pizza after frozen pizza, cuddling with Maggie, pilates, staying in, movies, sleeping, yoga, tv, and traveling home to visit my family.  Seriously, that does not an action movie make….

         All in all, I think it was well done.  I thought Julia Roberts played Elizabeth Gilbert perfectly (perfectly as in the vision I had in my mind) and I will definitely watch it again when it comes on TV.  But, in the meantime, I think should re-read the book because so many of her  ideas and ah-ha moments got lost in the making of the movie that it barely scratched the surface on what Elizabeth Gilbert journey was really about….the ever changing need to stay true to yourself.

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Eat Pray Love was released last week I’m hoping it lives up the book because I’m super excited to see this movie.  I read Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir a while ago and it really resonated with me; a woman who abandoned an unsatisfying marriage to live life on her own terms?  Yes, please.  (This book surfaced in my life shortly after I made the decision to leave my own crappy nuptials.)

          Now, I wasn’t able to abandon everything and travel around the world like Elizabeth Gilbert but I did make the decision to take control and live alone in a city where the only people I knew were force to spend the hours of 9-5 with me (I had just started and only knew a couple people better than just being able to recall their first AND last name—those few people became my Chicago family and without them I might have ran home to Kansas City quicker than you could say—nice to know ya.)  Maggie (a dog that still appreciates any weekend plans to stay in, make pizza and watch movies) and I took a couple years to figure out who we were, what we wanted, and where we wanted to be—for me, all roads led right back to my hometown.  For Maggie, the journey was a little less complicated but after her initial excitement to be out of a house where only her Mommy appreciated her, she decided she could be happy as long as there was a steady flow of cuddles and puppy food. 

          In my short life, I’ve left my hometown again and again and somehow always manage to find my way back—the story of my life:  a restless adventurer.  But what I’ve always needed (even now) is exactly what Elizabeth Gilbert found in her journey:  Balance.  Balance in life, friends, family, work, and relationships. 

          I don’t think this movie could have been released at a better time.  I need to be reminded that without balance it will inevitably fall apart.  I need to make sure that I’m cultivating the most important relationship in my life—the one I have with myself and I need to make sure I’m doing the things that I’m doing because that’s what I WANT to be doing.  (Don’t get me wrong, I know relationships are a give and take and I’m completely down with compromise but on the other hand, it’s so easy for me to chameleon myself into someone else’s stuff.)   I like doing a lot of different things so it’s easy for me to just go along until I wake up and realize I’m not doing any of the things I like to do anymore.   

          Which brings me to the good timing of this movie, I’ve noticed in the last couple months, the comment to Hubs, “we always do what you wanna do,” is coming out of my mouth more and more and while it’s normally delivered in a playful tone lately it’s gotten less playful each time I say it.  So, in an effort to get back to the things I like, Hubs has started wakeboarding and reduced the pressure on swimming/running down to nil.  I think we’ve come to an understanding that if I’m going to do something that he likes we need to at least do it together—aka triathlon-ing (and I’m sure there are a million other examples I could come up with but those are the only ones sticking out right now.)

         Back when Hubs and I started dating he constantly told me how much he loved my independent nature and it was one of the things that drew him to me but somewhere along way I’ve misplaced that independence.  And now with the release of Eat Pray Love, I have a revived urgency to take some of that liberating independence back…

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